80-year-old becomes oldest man to climb Mount Everest

An 80-year-old Japanese extreme skier who climbed Mount Everest five years
ago, but just missed becoming the oldest man to reach the summit, has
finally claimed the title.

By Bonnie Malkin and AP

4:45AM BST 23 May 2013

Yuichiro Miura reached the summit days before his rival, 81-year-old Nepalese man Min Bahadur Sherchan, is due to set off on the same climb.

Public broadcaster NHK showed footage of Mr Miura's daughter Emili talking with them via speaker phone in Tokyo, clapping when her brother told her they had reached the top.

A team of climbers, including 80-year-old Japanese mountaineer Yuichiro Miura, stand on the summit of Mount Everest (Reuters)

"I made it!" he said over the phone. "I never imagined I could make it to the top of Mt. Everest at age 80. This is the world's best feeling, although I'm totally exhausted. Even at 80, I can still do quite well."

The climbers planned to stick around the summit for about half an hour, take photos and then start to descend, Mr Miura's Tokyo office said.

Mr Miura's daughter, Emili Miura, said he "doesn't really care" about the rivalry. "He's doing it for his own challenge," she said.

The situation was not too different five years ago, when, at the age of 75, Mr Miura sought to recapture the title of oldest man to summit the mountain. He had set the record in 2003 at age 70, but it was later broken twice by slightly older Japanese climbers.

Yuichiro Miura (left) uses an oxygen mask while his son, Gota, sips green tea as they take a rest in a tent at their South Col camp at 8,000 meters (26,247 feet) on Mt Everest (AP)

He reached the summit on May 26, 2008, at the age of 75 years and 227 days, according to Guinness World Records. But the record eluded him because Mr Sherchan had scaled the summit the day before, at the age of 76 years and 340 days.

Mr Sherchan, a former Gurkha soldier in the British army, first began mountaineering in 1960 when he climbed Mount Dhaulagiri, the 26,790-foot high peak in Nepal, according to his grandson, Manoj Guachan. Always an adventurer, and unbowed by age, he walked the length of Nepal in 2003.